Episode 67
Beyond Space and Time in the Hall of Oorta We picked things up as the Gate to Ilveria opened on our first leg of our quest to find the Hall of Oorta beyond "The Nub" on Hubertus Prime. As soon as we entered Ilverian space our Reaver Sense was immediately hit with 'a thousand levels' of Reavers. Our paranoia (11 Paranoias?) kicked-in so we scrapped our original plan to jump through to Hubertus directly. Instead, we hijacked the gate as it opened, and slipped through with some other vessels into a sparsely populated sector. Here, we could hide out while our Mastergater mastergated for a block to open a connection directly to Hubertus Prime. The whole thing went pretty smoothly with only some minor gate disruption to show for our passing. When we arrived at Hubertus prime we immediately FTL-cloaked-stealthed down into the bowels of the mega city to find The Nub. Unfortunately, we were missing our 'Captain', (Joe), so Pete and Oz did their best to cover. There was a particularly scary moment when certain death was narrowly avoided by Oros' timely intervention, as our 'primary' pilot, (Pete, obviously), thought flying into oncoming traffic while invisible was an 'awesome shortcut', but otherwise the trip was uneventful. We had successfully infiltrated the Hubertus homeworld without detection! (No Kitchens were harmed). The Nub was deep down in the bowels of the Hubertus mega-capital on a level long-ago abandoned. Other than a low-level surveillance camera (semi-easily bypassed) the whole area appeared to be devoid of life or security. We parked Oros high up in an alley and gathered around The Nub disguised as "teenagers getting high". The Nub was some sort of ancient horn or bone with a slight iridescence to it that was protruding slightly from an otherwise unremarkable metal panel. The whole thing had a great sense of age about it. We figured it was once much larger and more complete but had been worn down to a 'nub' over the ages. We then gathered around the Star and performed the ritual to invoke a minor miracle to access the Nub. It took all of our combined Orb Lore, plus that of Ophilius and Mariana, to open the Nub but we did it. We found ourselves in a strange place. It was a large room, slightly pear-shaped, with a platform at one end and a lower-area at the other with a sparkling pool. The platform had some sort of control device which was probably responsible for bringing us to this place. The pool contained an incredibly detailed and animated view of our galaxy. It also had three large sphere-shaped robots around it that were manipulating it occasionally with their spindly arms. When we appeared it was just the three of us. There was no sign of the Progenitors. We started to look around but when Pete approached the control panel an alien being suddenly appeared down at the other end of the room by the Galaxy Map and the Spherebots. He was tall and thin with large dark eyes and grey skin. His whole countenance was very alien. It was Oorta himself, and we were standing in his hall! When he spoke, he invited us to look into the pool. When we did so, we saw the future of our galaxy in fast-forward. We witnessed the Reavers slowly but surely consume the stars in our galaxy. There was a short burst of hope in the form of a massive light blast from Ekenwynne (the last bastion of light?) but ultimately our galaxy and everything else went dark. We had witnessed the end of everything. The Alien was very interested in what we had seen. When we told him that we had seen the end of light he grew very concerned that he had made some kind of mistake. He told us that he had been waiting for us for a very long time but somehow we were not what he was expecting. Our perspective was way too... 'small'. Oorta made it sound like he was operating at some super-level where even our struggle to save the multiverse was a small conflict in his opinion. If we had truly been ready we would have seen something else. Something larger. Something that maybe didn't have an 'end'? Oorta was pretty pissed that we were so 'limited' but he got even more angry when Ophilius appeared in the room. Ophilious was locked in some kind of stasis field but it was him! Oorta called him an 'abomination', conjured crystal walls to trap us, and summoned his Crystal Golems to kick our asses. Luckily, we were able to talk him down with some combined party-persuasion and we avoided a fight... but only briefly. We managed to convince him to give us the Treatise of Omashu (who was another being like him. Omashu, not the Treatise) when he realized that helping us in our 'small way' might tip some kind of cosmic balance beyond our comprehension. The whole thing seemed very like how we were helping the rebels on Montoss but in this case we were the 'small folk' being helped by a being operating at a much grander, cosmic level. He got extremely agitated when Mariana also appeared, (and was also immediately trapped in a stasis bubble), but was ready to give us the Treatise and things seemed to be going pretty well. Unfortunately, that's when the Reaver's showed up and shit got real. Three Reaver assassins blipped into existence. They simply went from not being there to being there in an instant using no form of transport that we could fathom (they seemed to do this at will later on as well). On seeing them Oorta flipped out and evaporated into a cloud, (fortunately leaving the leaving the Treatise behind) but it wasn't clear whether he had escaped or somehow been banished by the Reavers. The Reavers immediately set upon the Crystal Golems, who were closest to their arrival point, but seemed pretty focused on us, so we figured we were likely the reason they were here. We managed to finish the first round of combat. Some of it was spent powering up, most of it fighting the Reavers who demonstrated an array of high-bullshit powers with some new ones for added flavour. They had no apparent darkness based powers, but instead had defenses that were especially effective against light based attacks! They also had the ability to reflect attacks, doing so repeatedly to Pete on segments where he was otherwise hitting with 3 Criticals. Fortunately Pete was cowering inside the "Fort Kick-Ass' mode of his Deployable Cover-Bot, and managed to avoid the worst effects of criticaling himself 6 times. Oz managed to defeat the Crystal Wall and grab the Treatise, but paid the price when he was caught in a light trap that left him immobilized, -20 to defend, and vulnerable to Reaver attack for 5 segments. At the end of the round, one Reaver had fled (temporarily?) after Pete's new Flechette Rounds chewed through his Soul Skin, (Pete Bursting the be-jesus out of him while Kiwi had him Trapped with his patented Anti-Teleport-Arch-Magic-Martial-Arts-Combo-Defend), then it failed its save vs Pete's Souldar-Overload Rounds, and was left at -32 to Strike & Defend! Meanwhile the two other Reavers had finished off the Crystal Golems with a friendly combo of Mystic Nets and Quadruple attacks, and now turned their attention to us. Pete was distracted by his own awsomeness, Kiwi prepared to move onto the next Reaver, and Oz was stunned. When we re-convene we'll be starting round 2, hopefully Joe will arrive better late than never with his FADs Cannons! 33 Generic 11 combat for Oz Pete and Oz 1 Bennie Back to Space Junk Log Category:Space Junk